December 5 Today in OPC History

In the December 1970 issue of the Ladies Home Journal, author and Presbyterian missionary Pearl Buck’s article “Will a Miracle Child be Born This Year?” appeared. Orthodox Presbyterian minister Cornelius Van Til wrote an open letter in response.

Dear Mrs. Buck,

In the Ladies Home Journal you write about waking up early these days. “For,” you said, “it is only the young who cannot get enough sleep. At my age sleep comes when it will and never lasts long. Perhaps the human frame resists the last sleep, from which there is no waking.” But you add, “I am always glad to wake again—especially on Christmas Day, for at Christmas my thoughts turn to the miracle of birth.”

That leads you to think of “the miracle child named Jesus.” But then you go on to think of an “earlier child” named Confucius; “today he might be called an illegitimate child.” His mother like other such mothers, declared that his father was a god; but “whoever he was, god or man, his name was too high to mention, his seed too valuable to neglect.”

“Confucius,” you claim, “was the predecessor of that other miracle child, Jesus Christ.” How otherwise can we “explain the similarities between their teaching”? “Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ ” Five centuries earlier, Confucius had said, “Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”

“Can this be an accident?” you ask. You think not. You’ve heard somewhere that in the “lost years” after Jesus was twelve years old, he “lived in the state of Nepal” and there “learned the wisdom of Confucius.” And then, as you watched “the faint rose rays of dawn begin to lighten the dark sky,” you think “of a third miracle child, who now lives in India: the young Dalai Lama of Tibet—driven from his kingdom as Confucius was driven into exile long ago, and as Jesus was driven to the cross. The world destroys those who are miraculously born, the unexplainable ones, who because they cannot be otherwise explained are called the sons of gods.” “The Dalai Lama is one of these,” you say; “when he enters the room I feel his presence.”

You are grieved because we “refuse their wisdom, we even deny their greatness, as Jesus was denied. We surround them with scorn and will not rest till we have put an end to them.” But you believe that “they are born again. Through the miracle of birth, of some simple mother, of some unknown father, they are born again-and under their leadership the human race takes another step.” It is sad to realize that this faint glimmer was all you had to bring to the darkness of China when you were a missionary there years ago. It is heartbreaking to think that this is the best hope you can offer your “children” now.

Dear Mrs. Buck, it’s only “Follow the gleam!” with no light really there. You realize that death will soon come, and the windows of the soul will be closed forever to the true Light of the world that never fades or flickers. No, there will be no “miracle child” again to help us take a step forward. There was, once for all, the dawn of the light of God’s grace in the only “miracle child” who was ever the Son of God come to earth! He is “the dayspring from on high that hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78, 79). May his glorious dawning bring light to your life!

C. V. T.